(1S*,2S*)-1,2-Di-tert-butylglycol

In the crystal structure of the title compound, C10H22O2, co-operative chains of O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds are established by intra- as well as intermolecular interactions. These hydrogen bonds connect the molecules into infinite strands along [100], with a binary level graph-set descriptor C 2 2(4). Excluding the H atoms on the hydroxy groups, the molecule shows non-crystallographic C 2 symmetry.

In the crystal structure of the title compound, C 10 H 22 O 2 , cooperative chains of O-HÁ Á ÁO hydrogen bonds are established by intra-as well as intermolecular interactions. These hydrogen bonds connect the molecules into infinite strands along [100], with a binary level graph-set descriptor C 2 2 (4). Excluding the H atoms on the hydroxy groups, the molecule shows non-crystallographic C 2 symmetry.

Experimental
TK thanks the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung for a PhD scholarship financed by the Bundesministerium fü r Bildung und Forschung.
Supplementary data and figures for this paper are available from the IUCr electronic archives (Reference: BI2332).

Comment
The title compound was synthesized as a potential chelating ligand with sterically demanding substituents on the carbon backbone to estimate the influence of steric pretense on coordination reactions with different central atoms.
In the molecule ( Fig. 1) bond lengths and angles are found in the range apparent for other vicinal diols bearing sterically more demanding substituents (Betz & Klüfers, 2007, Allscher et al., 2008. While the tert-butyl groups adopt a staggered conformation with respect to the hydroxy groups, the O atoms are present in a nearly eclipsed arrangement. The reason for this unfavourable conformation becomes evident when examining intermolecular contacts. In the crystal structure, inter-and intramolecular hydrogen bonds are present which connect the molecules into strands along [1 0 0] (Fig. 2). The bulky hydrophobic tert-butyl groups encase this strand of hydroxyl groups. The hydrogen bonds form cooperative chains. In terms of graph-set analysis (Etter et al., 1990;Bernstein et al., 1995) the descriptor for these chains on the binary level is C 2 2 (4).
Excluding the H atoms on the hydroxy groups, the molecule shows non-crystallographic C 2 symmetry.
The molecular packing of the title compound is shown in Figure 3.

Experimental
The title compound was prepared according to a published procedure (Boehrer et al., 1997). Crystals suitable for X-ray studies were obtained upon recrystallization from boiling toluene.

Refinement
Due to the absence of a strong anomalous scatterer, the absolute structure parameter, which is 0.982 with an estimated standard deviation of 1.241 for the unmerged data set, is meaningless. Thus 1056 Friedel opposites have been merged and the absolute configuration has been arbitrarily chosen.
Carbon-bound as well as oxygen-bound H atoms were placed in calculated positions (C-H 1.00 Å for CH-groups, C-H 0.98 Å for methyl groups and O-H 0.84 Å for hydroxy groups) and were included in the refinement in the riding model approximation, with U(H) set to 1.2U eq (C) for the CH-groups and 1.5U eq (C) for methyl groups and 1.5U eq (O) for the hydroxy groups.